I finally finished the last class of the class I took at Stanford about some junk in the ground leading to wars and shit.

Somewhere in my fantasy land brain, I kind of sort of thought I would be all attentive and do all the reading and think deep thoughts and shit. But, nah. Turns out pure fantasy.

I got through my undergrad degree with a key formula either (a) do the reading and rarely show up for class or (b) do no or very little reading and actually show up. I lived true to form decades later and ended up at (b) despite pretty fancy intentions.

That whole showing up thang had a corollary I lived again. Doze when the going got all-body tingling numb and dull. Yup, I’m living it.

I’ll probably keep the books and get aroud to reading them even. Or we’ll move and I will put them in order on a new shelf somewhere. Plus ce change and other probably mispelled French.

I did wake up a bit during this the last class, mostly to try to utter something other than the “shut up you arrogant prick” thought racing my brain. I know I got my own self-esteem issues and whatnot that I sometimes blame on gender. But, at the end of the day, I fucking hate, can’t abide, want to fight with middle-aged dudes who think they know shit they don’t know.

I don’t know, could very well be me. Could be envy. You know the kind of guy who always sits with his arm wide dangling off the seat beside him and his legs wide in that gargantuan balls need air spread and a smug inner satisfaction grin with maybe a bit of residual vacation tan dappling the surface? That guy without a care in the world, who, in fact if people only listened, thinks he could fix the planet?

In this case, the guy was an orthopedic surgeon dabbling in a little night school self-improvement. Yay for keeping busy smart man.

But come on, douche, can it with your uninformed opinion. I can pull straight from my ass 27 reasons a big old U.S. federal tax on oil isn’t going to save the world, starting with Civics 101 on how taxes on shit work and state rights and all.

Ironically, the person who I most wanted to hear speak up, because she seemed to have a wealth of actual government, foreign policy knowledge and experience, walked out the door the same time as me asking, “Was I rude in that class?” She did often insert names and dates and factual data that for me were living history lessons and an honest counterpoint to the more theory intense ramblings of the prof.

How come it’s always the people with info and ideas apologizing, while the smug bastards remain unrepentant?

Since Sunday, I’ve been feeling crippled up and a-slowly dying like.

The combo of planning our group’s retreat, painfully worrisome, hefting and toting my own bags (see prior entry on my relatedness to the Clampetts and unsuitability for fine hoteling and valeting) and getting trapped in a car in traffic for hours, unable to party til I dropped, all caught up, I fear, making me feel something only slightly lower than 9 million years old. It’s fucked that a stiff neck can just be a tiny, relative bit of pain that just feels exponentially worst.

How big is my neck compared to the rest of my considerable bulk that I should be so miserable?

It’s getting better, I need to believe. Or my ibuprofen, naproxen sodium cocktails of inappropriate doses and/or what I’m thinking of my Israeli heat packs are adding to the pain-induced delirium. It’s an Israeli heatpack, because the chick who sold it at the mall kiosk was seemingly such a national and aggressive enough to make me believe she could have held the West Bank.

Rather than wait to be hit with a rocketlauncher launched rocket, I ponied up the dough and walked away with the deluxe, four-product pack of herbal healing, microwaveable warmth. It’s like I reached across to foreign lands using the universal language of US currency.

What a weekend.

I survived the work retreat. In fact, it went better than I had hoped when I headed out to it. Fucking A, there is not more work in the world then trying to herd together 20 odd intellectual types, emphasis on odd.

But I did it, and I happily headed the fuck home to my bed, M. and no work for two whole weekend days. Oh joy.

Better yet, the plan was to head out to M.’s office X-mas bash. I looked forward to a company function in which I did absofuckinglutely nothing to coordinate. And, it was at the home of Hangar 1. A party at a vodka distillery the day after I finished getting inundated with my own workshit? Count me the fuck in, and I’ll take a dozen cosmo’s to go.

I ain’t been to a fancy ass holiday function in forever, and M. had been to one exactly never. So, we got ourselves ready. I even wasted a couple hours beautifying, no doubt a hangover from not getting enough spa action over the work retreat, so close and so relaxation not for me in spa-land.

I got the extra deluxe “crystal” nails by the local Vietnamese entrepreneur down the street eager for me to upgrade. I figured it would be a good thing for M.’s colleagues not to see me with the bloody chewed stubs retreat-planning anxiety had left me.

Surprise, surprise both my fancy party-going type frocks fit, and they looked pretty good with the right foundation garments. Why the sweet young’uns at the local malls and nightclubs getting all hootchie don’t know about the importance of quality underthings, I ain’t never gonna know. It’s like knowing about that shit has missed a generation.

He wore black on black on black with his nice suit jacket. I wore makeup. Foundation, eyeshadow, mascara, blush, lipstick, the whole drag queen kit and kaboodle. (I totally don’t know shit about girly things, but if I play drag queen in my head, I’m as hot as Patrick Swayze as a woman every day. I’m no Julie Newmar, but I cleans up real nice.)

Rock on, we left the house looking good, fucking real nice, speaking for the man, anyway.

Approximately, three and a half, long, trapped, claustrophobic hours later, we were still no where near completetion of what should have been a one-hour ride.

Apparently some douche with a past and no interest in the future thought whipping out a gun and shooting a CHP dude would be an awesome idea. We got near the closed off exits just in time to literally have no fucking exit. Cars ahead of us, cars behind.

We got there in time to hit the bar just as the woman running it was announcing enough and couldn’t be swayed to squeeze one last lemon or pour one last drink.

For dinner we were the best damn looking couple at the all night local eatery. Carrow’s saved our lives.

M. declared that the aforementioned douche deserved to die.

Epiphanous happenings over wine. I am back in my room. The aforementioned suite. The suite beyond my experential knowledge.

It is late, and I am enjoying the smell of wooden embers glowing in the hearth. Warmth, light, romance, fire.

Here’s where the bullshit that is my life, hits the fan of shit and pain and stupid. I am in this room with and because of work. I am in this state, the state of Cali, the state with the bears on their flags, with and because of love.

Am I sitting by the fire aglow and rustic in a spacious, warm suite canopy bed, white linens, spa fresh from a gratis bathing ritual, because of love? Alas, no. My coworker, our boss and I just finished talking about tomorrow’s proceedings.

Woe is my access to comfort. Woe is my warm sweet oak smell and warm sweet oak taste of Chardonnay near enflamed logs. Wine country is missing its romance and giving up its toil.

Viva la revolution. Viva Chavez.

I’m typing this from the heart of wine country with a complimentary beverage of the area by my side. Sonoma.

About a year or so ago, I went on my first work retreat in a Mexican village. I dreaded the trip. Dreaded being with co-workers who I didn’t yet know from a state I had just moved to and talk about work, a concept I will always have mixed feelings about.

I swear to god, somewhere there’s a self-help, workplace consultant, game playing guru chuckling over inventing retreats. It all came about from a twisted reinterpretation of Stockholm Syndrome no doubt.

This year’s dread, which grew into fear and loathing worthy of Hunter S., but unfortunately lacking the ether, ammunition and Dr. Gonzo banter, crept in because I know the job better now. That knowledge meant I pretty much on my own had to set the whole motherfucking retreat enchilada into motion. Talk to hotels, haggle prices, get rooms, get food and tell people where to go. You’d think I’d like telling people where to go. Hasn’t rocked as hard as I wanted, perhaps because of where I didn’t get to suggest.

Dealing with arranging 20 people from different backgrounds, different experiences, different levels of self-awareness from four different time zones just fucking sucks all away around. I am too exhausted to play the ice-breaking games I luckily won’t have to play.

Cockeyed, crazy, laser beam sunshine sweet optimist that I am, I’m losing all Is that aren’t in team and making a whole bathtub full of lemonade. That would be a Jacuzzi brand tub.

Here’s the flipside of feeling the hurt of planning a big work function. You’re ground zero, the bullseye, the lynch pin of all contact with the hotel staff, and they know you are the one to review the contract, pay the bills and make happy nice business happen for them.

Thanks to that dynamic, I sleep here tonight.

That’s a pic of my suite. There’s a bunch more pictures here.

Fireplace, Jacuzzi, four-poster bed, a balcony overlooking a fountain, complimentary spa lotions and salts, wine and the fucking size of a decent sized studio apartment in Cambridge. You gotta check the pictures.

Retardedly plush. Especially considering my beau snoozes about 70 miles south of here, and I should be doing some work reading.

By the way, I have no business in a fancy schmancy hotel. I like parking my own car and carrying my own bags, valets and bellhops make me jumpy.

When room service brought my fabulously delicious club sandwich, the room service dude knocked when I was taking the pictures. Being as I’m about one beat away from the Beverly Hillbillies, I confessed to photographing digs I ain’t never seen the likes of. Not only does the toilet flush, but the magic water tub shoots jets.

I am a giant rube-like dork.

I’m still trying to find the perfect bird of prey. Plants are easier, because they stand still. Then, there was the Hitcockian flock.

Usually I hate these fucking things. But something appealed to me vanity-wise that I’m much more like Nietzche than O.J.

You scored as Friedrich Nietzsche. Well you’re an egotistical maniac, and you are so very iconoclastic that you probably are currently lost in a post-modern Jupiter, I mean jungle of self-definition. Don’t let it get you down though, someday, through a willful onslaught of reinterpretation of dated forms and ideas, you will strike on something that passes as remotely new, and people WILL be into it on the basis of how hip it is alone. Also, the average espresso drinker looks up to you. Friedrich Nietzsche 92% Dante Alighieri 58% Sigmund Freud 50% Miyamoto Musashi 33% Charles Manson 33% Stephen Hawking 33% Hugh Hefner 25% Elvis Presley 25% Steven Morrissey 25% C.G. Jung 17% Mother Teresa 17% Jesus Christ 17% Adolf Hitler 8% O.J. Simpson 8%

What Pseudo Historical Figure Best Suits You?
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